Dude, Where’s My Card?

April 04, 2013

It was April 1st so I hoped that it was just an April Fool’s joke. I was at the grocery store checkout and reached for the credit card that I generally use for groceries but it was nowhere to be found. After paying with a different card, I called the credit card company to see when the last transaction was. Fortunately, it was at the restaurant where I had lunch that day so no one else had used it. After putting a temporary hold on my credit card, calling the restaurant and everywhere I had been afterwards and searching my home and car, I had to accept that it was gone and cancel the card.

No matter how careful you are, losing a credit card can happen to anyone and can be particularly annoying when you’re traveling or use it for a lot of automatic transactions that would need to be changed if the card is cancelled. However, here are some things you can do to minimize the damage should this happen to you:

1) Have more than one credit and debit card, especially when you travel. Even if you don’t lose a card, there are a  number of reasons why a card can suddenly become unusable and Murphy’s Law says its likely to be right when you most need it. (I remember one particularly nasty incident many years ago while stranded by a snow storm in Atlanta.) Ideally, you’ll also want to keep the extra cards in a separate place in case you lose your entire wallet or purse.

2) But don’t carry around too many cards. The more you have, the more likely one will be lost. It also means having to cancel that many more cards if you lose them all at once.

3) Keep a record of your debit and credit card information somewhere else. This makes it easy to cancel them if you need to. The only thing worse than losing  a card is not knowing which one it was. Yes, your losses may be limited but losing $500 in fraudulent charges is still $500 that I’m sure you can think of better ways to spend.

4) Use a credit card you leave at home for your automatic transactions. There are a couple of reasons for this. First, since you’re not using the card on a day-to-day basis, you don’t have to worry as much about maxing it out and having one of those automatic transactions not go through (which can lead to late payment fees and lots of other unpleasant things.) Second, you also don’t have to worry as much about losing it and having to change the credit card number with each of the various vendors. (I just learned this from this experience.)

5) Have a list of all those automatic payments in case you do lose that card. You don’t want to miss an auto-payment because you forgot to update the card number on file.

Hopefully, you’ll never need these tips but if you do, you’ll be really glad you put them in place.